Bruins GM Don Sweeney lauds regular season, looks forward to playoffs

Mike Loftus The Patriot Ledger

Tuesday

Apr 10, 2018 at 12:14 AM

The Bruins lost out on first place in the Eastern Conference with a late slump, but GM Don Sweeney is hopeful his team can reverse that trend in their first-round playoff series against the Maple Leafs.

BOSTON – Forget about the regular season. It’s history, and nothing can be done to change it. Playoff results are all that matter now.

But while we’re at it, let’s not forget about the regular season, OK?

Bruins general manager Don Sweeney straddled those lines on Monday afternoon at Warrior Arena, where his coaches and players stayed away from the ice after a murderous, season-ending stretch of 21 games in 39 days ultimately, and probably understandably, resulted in diminishing returns: After posting an 11-2-3 record in 16 games over 31 days in March, the B’s tailed off to 1-3-1 over five games in the first eight days of April, capped by Sunday night’s damaging 4-2 loss to the Panthers.

The cost: First place in the Eastern Conference, which would have guaranteed home ice for at least three rounds. Instead of facing something of a Cinderella team in the Devils (44 wins, 97 points), who qualified as the second Wild Card in the East, the second-place Bruins draw the Atlantic Division rival Maple Leafs (49 wins, 105 points), an on-the-rise team that made a 10-point improvement over last season. The B’s do have home ice in this best-of-7 series, with Game 1 on Thursday and Game 2 on Saturday at TD Garden.

“Quality hockey club,” Sweeney said of the Leafs, who went 3-1-0 against the Bruins (one win in overtime) at his pre-series press conference. “They play with a lot of speed, so we’ve got our work cut out for us from top to bottom. They’ve got depth, they’ve got scoring ability. It’s going to be a big challenge.”

Sweeney made certain to point out that despite their tough final week, the 2017-18 Bruins met and overcame challenges well enough over the course of the season to win 50 games, make a 17-point improvement (95 to 112) over 2016-17, and finish fourth in the NHL overall.

“I think 50 wins speaks to the body of work of what our team has accomplished thus far,” the GM said. “It’s a successful regular season, but now we’ll be judged on how we do going forward.”

Sweeney acknowledged the difficulties presented by the schedule over the season’s final seven weeks, a stretch in which the B’s played without critical core veterans Zdeno Chara (9 games) and Patrice Bergeron (13), top rookie defenseman Charlie McAvoy (15) and big-name trade deadline acquisition Rick Nash (12) for extended periods. As Bergeron, Chara and McAvoy filtered back into the lineup, support players like forwards Riley Nash and Sean Kuraly and second-year defenseman Brandon Carlo got hurt, the latter until next season with a broken ankle sustained on April 1.

Kuraly (upper body) and Rick Nash (concussion) were back on skates last week, and Riley Nash (ear laceration) skated on Monday.

“We’ve got a couple days to practice and see where they all, kind of, get to,” the GM said. “Hopefully they’ll all be available.”

Whoever can play, and is selected by head coach Bruce Cassidy to do so, must re-establish chemistry and timing if the Bruins are to correct the uncharacteristic errors that marked the final week. The coach and GM hope Monday’s day off, and practices on Tuesday and Wednesday, will help recharge and revive the players, and remind them of how they can use their system and their lineup to their advantage by the time Game 1 begins.

“It’s not about a reset,” Sweeney said. “It’s really about tightening up what they do, and the coaches will address some of the areas that probably haven’t been as tight as they would like to be going in.

“You have to be playing your best hockey. You don’t win if you’re not playing your best hockey this time of year.”

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